Welcome to the latest series on the wildly popular JosephSangl.com – “Top 5 Ways To Gain Financial Margin”

Financial margin is something we all want and need in order to stay focused on the far more important things in our lives!

#1 – Reduce interest rates on existing debt

This escapes many people because the interest rate of debt is usually “out of sight – out of mind”, but it could very well be the greatest one step you could take to gain financial margin.

I highly recommend that you use our free tool – the “Actual Cost of Debt calculator” to determine just how much your debt is costing you – be sure to find out your actual interest rates so that the numbers will be accurate.

Here are two areas I where I see people save tons of money by reducing their interest rates.

Mortgage Interest Rate For every $10,000 finances, a 1% reduction in interest rate will save $100. So if you have a $150,000 mortgage and could lower your interest rate by 1%, you will save $1,500 per year in interest – $125 per month! I encourage you to use CNN’s Refinance calculator to see what refinance deals would work best for you.

Credit Card Interest Rate This is where I typically see ridiculous interest rate charges that are simply not necessary! Consider $6,000 in credit card debt at 21.99%. That will result in interest charges of nearly $1,300 a year. This is why I am such a fan of 0% Balance Transfer Credit Card offers and maintain a list of offers on this website. If that $6,000 of debt were moved to a 0% balance transfer credit card offer, that incredible amount of interest would actually be applied to debt reduction!

Here are other areas to look at – vehicle loans, medical debts, furniture loans, personal loans, payday loans, 401(k) loans, and any type of loan where interest is being charged.